Wednesday, April 1, 2009

attacking the aggressor

the other day, my favorite aunt, whom i lived with, during childhood came home from hongkong. for me it was something i shouldn't miss. not because of the chocolates or the pasalubong but because of the fact that i have long considered her as one of my significant others and its been a while since i last saw her.

after she left the country and decided to live in hongkong, she landed as a bank supervisor and lives with her husband who is a senior journalist for a hongkong-based asian magazine.

so before my shift starts that afternoon, i have immediately stood from my bed and paid her a visit for lunch.

it was a long kamustahan. but ended up with a discussion about life living away from home. no wonder i never thought of going abroad.

but eventually the highlight of that lunch shifted to this certain chinese journalist who wrote an article calling the philippines a nation of servants.

then the same night, dabo sent me an email regarding the actual transcript of the said article.

yes, i was dismayed on how this journalist used his position to demean other people. but reading the response from fellow filipinos made it worst.

when someone hit you, smile back and give him a tap. you don't really have to stoop down to the aggresor's level, in order for other people to realize who is righteous between the both of you.

i never believed in dealing aggression with aggression. as much as possible, i tend to fireback with dignity and in the wittiest way i can be, and that for me is the sweetest among all form of revenge.

nonetheless, i have only three points about the article.

first, i don't really understand the point chip tsao is driving at in his article. it seems like he finds it offensive for filipinos, who help and assist his fellow chinese with their everday lives and be away from their families, and to quote him, for cheap labor, to protect a territory they believe to be theirs. but it is alright for him for russians to blow a hongkong freighter and kill seven of their people since stalin and lenin, who were both russians, were one of the pillars of their chinese ideology. also, it is just for japanese to plant their flag without due process and take complete ownership of diaoyu island for the simple reason that they love japanese animes.

its a big HUH?!? if you'll ask me.

second, being a best selling author and columnist, he should know that there is also a great wall in between being satire and being racist. and definitely this article is the least thing from being satire. satiric writing makes use of a smart humor in order to fish improvement from a pool of problems, conflicts and disputes. but it seemed like, i don't hear anyone laughing in this article or probably someone might have a poor sense of humor--- now, that is being satire.

lastly, hanging a map, giving a harsh lecture then threatening his filipino helper would still not make any sense at all. assuming that louisa indeed has a degree in international politics, would he expect her to argue with him, if he already posed a threat against her job?

the ongoing dispute on who really owns the spratlys, nansha, kalayaan or quần Đảo trường sa islands is becoming an issue that transgresses from territorial claims to a deep dark well of racial discrimination. when everyone believed that modernity and globalization will be able to fill the depth of our racial prejudices against one another, it seemed like someone miscalculated the real depth that they have to patch up. history have already told us that the longest and most brutal wars the world has seen actually rooted from the same conflict that we are actually involve at- land.

i just hope that no war will be witnessed again for the next decades and centuries to come, or better yet, no war at all. but of course, that is just my idealistic self speaking again

12 comments:

mainit pa rin ang isyung ito. tsao and the publishers issued their respective apologies that were not really so. they stand with the article and regret that it was 'misunderstood'. so basically ang gusto nyang sabihin: 'sorry at hindi nyo ako naintindihan.'